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Post by mei on Jul 13, 2020 1:18:56 GMT -5
Thanks for the suggestion tzarine. I don't know this book, so will look out for it. |
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Post by scrubb on Jul 13, 2020 11:39:12 GMT -5
I know that Beloved is a great book, but I just didn't enjoy reading it. I mean, of course what it's about is horrible, awful stuff, but I can enjoy reading books about horrible, awful stuff depending on style. The style of Beloved just didn't work for me.
Maybe I should give it another try - it was decades ago that I read it. Perhaps I'd appreciate it more now.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 13, 2020 11:58:16 GMT -5
I held off reading it because I didn't think I could take it. I'm much better suited for it in my understanding of American history vis-a-vis race than I would have been when I was younger... maybe that would be the same for you.
I've had lots of books where I loved it then / hate it now (LOTR, I'm looking at you); but then also many the other way, that I just wasn't ready for it yet when I was younger.
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Post by tzarine on Jul 13, 2020 12:37:04 GMT -5
i didn't read beloved when it came out, but i love morrison. it's so relevant now. i also love faulkner's tales of yoknapatawpha county.
morrison's writing really speaks to me
“There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain had never admitted the possibility of other people. She wept then. Tears for the deaths of the littlest things: the castaway shoes of children; broken stems of marsh grass battered and drowned by the sea; prom photographs of dead women she never knew; wedding rings in pawnshop windows; the tiny bodies of Cornish hens in a nest of rice.”
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 14, 2020 5:14:54 GMT -5
41. Becoming, Michelle Obama. Great audiobook for a long road trip. Brilliant. And the audiobook was read by Michelle herself. I learnt a few things I didn’t know about the Obamas, and this book reinforced my positive view of them.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 14, 2020 5:25:32 GMT -5
41. Becoming, Michelle Obama. Great audiobook for a long road trip. Brilliant. And the audiobook was read by Michelle herself. I learnt a few things I didn’t know about the Obamas, and this book reinforced my positive view of them. They were real leaders, and wonderful people. It's extra awful thinking of the Menace and Melania being in the White House, when you think of the quality of the folks they succeeded. |
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 15, 2020 8:42:14 GMT -5
I recently reread Morrison's THe Bluest Eye and I'm not sure I can say I enjoyed it, although I think it was a huge accomplishment. I mean, it is a book that opens "We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow." so it's pretty clear the subject matter is not going to be light. Anyway, I think it's fair that we don't always get on with an author's style, even if we admire them.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 15, 2020 18:59:08 GMT -5
42. The Religious Body, Catherine Aird. A good traditional English mystery, written in the sixties. The convent setting is interesting, and the outcome quite unexpected.
My only disappointment was in the audiobook, the narrator’s voice becomes quite soft at times, making it hard to hear on a road trip. I rather like mysteries involving nuns.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 15, 2020 21:07:43 GMT -5
33) Rutger Bregman, Humankind
A nice, hopeful, but also realistic book about human nature and society. Not much new for me (it was kind of a summary of a lot of stuff I'd learned in environmental economics and sociology classes), but for those who haven't studied that stuff (or would enjoy the review, like I did), I recommend it.
Bregman's the Dutch historian who a couple years ago onstage at Davos said that it was "bullshit" that all the attendees proposed all of these policy recommendations to fix inequality while avoiding the obvious point that rich people and corporations should just pay their taxes.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 15, 2020 23:03:29 GMT -5
Fifteen Dogs, by Andre Alexis. Giller prize winner, and I'd wanted to read it for a long time. It is based on a novel idea, and it has several different interesting concepts, and it was reasonably engaging. But it was also very disappointing - it's clear that the author doesn't know anything at all about dogs. And considering that the book is about dogs given human intelligence, and how they handle it, the nature/character of dogs was a fairly key bit.
The book is also pretty down on people. Only a tiny minority of the humans in the book are decent or kind and that's the unpleasant background to the story.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 16, 2020 3:54:16 GMT -5
43. Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon. Donna Andrews. A very funny cozy mystery set in a computer game development office. Lots of fun quirky, nerdy characters, plenty of possible suspects, and lots of light-hearted high jinks along the way.
George the buzzard takes an important part in the resolution.
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Post by Oweena on Jul 16, 2020 8:53:25 GMT -5
A Wild and Precious Life: A Memoir by Edie Windsor and Joshua Lyon
Edie is the Windsor in Windsor vs. the United States, the court case that helped to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act and opened the door to legal same sex marriage in the US.
She was born in 1929 and lived a closted life in the beginning, but after meeting her longterm partner she became an activist. She and Thea Speyer were together for some 40 years and the parts of the book in her words move quickly.
She was a mathematician and early computer nerd, rising through the ranks of IBM. The book left me sorry I never got a chance to meet her so I suppose that's an endorsement. She died before the book was published, and I liked the way the co-author parts didn't intrude on her telling her life story, but provided further background.
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Post by Oweena on Jul 16, 2020 8:55:50 GMT -5
I'm only catching up on this thread:
I did not like Beloved, that's just not my style of writing.
And Becoming--loved it and it would probably make me all happy inside to listen to the audio book in Michelle's voice. Maybe I'll do that when I'm feeling rage over what our country has come to.
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Jul 17, 2020 10:36:14 GMT -5
44. Heavenly Pleasures, Kerry Greenwood. Set in an apartment building in modern day inner city Melbourne, this story is complex with loads of well-drawn, eccentric characters. The mystery was convoluted, and most of the apartment dwellers had a part in the solution.
Numerous current social issues were touched on, so some may think this book is not quite a cozy mystery, but I enjoyed its complexity and humour.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 19, 2020 11:07:14 GMT -5
34) Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel
Wow -- I really loved this; couldn't put it down. It has just the right blend of realism and dreamlike images, ghosts, art, to appeal to me.
I knew when my mom hated it that I'd probably like it. She and I should collaborate on a project where we both review the same books; that would be funny.
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Post by mei on Jul 19, 2020 11:38:10 GMT -5
41. Becoming, Michelle Obama. Great audiobook for a long road trip. Brilliant. And the audiobook was read by Michelle herself. I learnt a few things I didn’t know about the Obamas, and this book reinforced my positive view of them. I watched the Netflix documentary of the book tour last week. Really enjoyed that too. It of course overlaps with the content of the book but it is hopeful and endearing at times and reminds you of what leaders can be like. |
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Post by sprite on Jul 19, 2020 15:39:09 GMT -5
34) Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel Wow -- I really loved this; couldn't put it down. It has just the right blend of realism and dreamlike images, ghosts, art, to appeal to me. I knew when my mom hated it that I'd probably like it. She and I should collaborate on a project where we both review the same books; that would be funny. i started this before my copy of 'The God of Small Things' became available, and as that's a work read, i postponed Glass HOtel. It seems odd to read books set in Canada that aren't marketed as 'Canadian novels!!!' |
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Post by sprite on Jul 19, 2020 15:41:28 GMT -5
and i would read those reviews.  |
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 19, 2020 16:03:01 GMT -5
Maybe it's because only maybe a quarter of it is on Vancouver Island? - the rest is in NYC or my old hometown Greenwich CT.
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Post by Oweena on Jul 19, 2020 17:14:48 GMT -5
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
By the author of Shotgun Lovesongs, which many of us here liked. He wrote this one in 2017.
I liked the first 2/3, the characters were well-developed (95% men) and then I felt like the last 1/3 went down the toilet.
Butler does have a way of describing nature, I'll give him that. It's better than his book Little Faith but not up to Shotgun Lovesongs.
I gave him three chances, I liked one of them. Now I'll move on to other authors with no regrets.
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Post by sprite on Jul 20, 2020 13:55:34 GMT -5
Maybe it's because only maybe a quarter of it is on Vancouver Island? - the rest is in NYC or my old hometown Greenwich CT. i thought it started in Toronto? I must have been reading too fast. |
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 20, 2020 13:58:48 GMT -5
No you're right actually - it does start in Toronto, then it's on Vancouver Island, THEN it's in NYC/CT. Sorry to confuse.
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Post by sprite on Jul 20, 2020 16:41:57 GMT -5
Today, one minute after carrying them into the hall, I forgot that the groceries had been delivered.
It doesn't take much to confuse me.
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Post by tzarine on Jul 21, 2020 20:16:06 GMT -5
invisible cities
italo calvino
marco polo tells kublai khan tales about the cities of his empire
dreamy, magic realismy
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Post by scrubb on Jul 23, 2020 23:06:59 GMT -5
50. Island of the Sequinned Love Nun, by Christopher Moore. He's creative! Some of his writing makes me laugh, although there's a lot of cheap laughs mixed in with the clever ones. This one got a bit sentimental, and was pretty much full of caricatures of islanders, so I won't recommend it, but I'm not sorry I read it.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jul 24, 2020 1:48:46 GMT -5
Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other
We had a good discussion about this at our book club yesterday, with almost everyone enjoying it. I really liked the interwoven tales of black women in the UK, although I felt it almost tipped over into didactic at times - I mean that in a book of that length, Evaristo seemed to feel like she had to fit in a lot of info. I guess that very much depends on the perspective of the reader.
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Post by tucano on Jul 24, 2020 3:06:30 GMT -5
Has anyone ever found that following an author on social media puts you off reading them?
I'm trying to finish a travel book and while it's interesting the author is very vocal/political on twitter and much more grumpy than she seems in the book.
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Post by tzarine on Jul 25, 2020 13:18:00 GMT -5
tucano
who is the author?
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Post by Oweena on Jul 25, 2020 17:31:28 GMT -5
These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackman
I know very little about Dickinson and have admitedly only read a few of her poems. This book of 10 chapters focuses on the times in her life where forces conspired to have an impact on either her writing or her legacy. It was insigthful and at the same time gave me enough background on other aspects of her life that it all made sense. She was obviously an intriguing and smart woman, both held back by what was expected of women and willing to take a stand against the norms of her time.
Now I'll have to go investigate her poetry.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 27, 2020 5:08:15 GMT -5
35) Drew Lanham, The Home Place
I heard about Drew Lanham, a Black PhD wildlife conservation/ecology professor and birder in South Carolina, because Jason Ward, a young Black birder from the Bronx whom I follow on Twitter said he was inspired by Lanham. Then I saw Lanham on a panel and thought he was lovely and had interesting things to say. I had to order this book from the bookstore because the publisher was in the middle of reprinting it; maybe I'm not the only person who decided they wanted to read his book after seeing him on that panel, which I think is great.
So anyway - it's a slim volume from a small press, combination memoir and nature writing, about his family and their land in rural South Carolina. I really loved it; his descriptions are lyrical, and he talks about these things both with honesty and love. I'll keep this book and will read it again sometime, especially the next time I'm headed down to the longleaf pine ecosystem down in the Carolinas.
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